by Morgan Rice
“Ceres,” her father said. “Wait.”
Ceres paused, but she couldn’t stay patient. She shifted in place, looking ahead in the hope that she might catch a glimpse of her quarry.
“There’s no time to wait,” she said. “Every second I hesitate is a second in which Stephania might get away.”
“So let her get away,” his father said. “It’s done. Stephania doesn’t have the Empire’s army to command. She doesn’t have any power. She’s just running now. She isn’t a threat.”
Ceres shook her head. Her father didn’t understand what Stephania was like. Not the way she did.
“Stephania will always be a threat. You could abandon her on an island somewhere, surrounded by nothing but birds and trees, and she would find a way to make them into her spies.”
“I know she hurt you,” her father said, putting a hand on her arm.
“She did,” Ceres said. “And she hurt Sartes, and who knows how many other people? She won’t stop unless someone stops her. Permanently.”
“Is it worth your life?” her father countered. “You can hear them, in the tunnels. I don’t want to lose my daughter.”
Ceres shook her head. “It won’t come to that. Which way, Sartes?”
She saw her brother hesitate, then point. He obviously understood. “Stephania will be going that way,” he said. He pointed in a different direction. “But Ceres, I think we should go that way. It will take us to one of the rebellion’s alternate exits. We can get to a boat. Father’s right. The Empire is done. Stephania is done. There won’t be much time before this place is full of Felldust soldiers.”
Ceres saw him look over to Leyana. It was only natural that he wanted to protect her. Ceres knew what she had to do.
“You go,” she said. “Get down to the water and see if you can find us a boat. I’ll catch up.”
“Ceres—” her father began.
“I’ll catch up,” Ceres promised again, and she started to run.
Stephania wasn’t going to get away this time.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
From the deck of the smuggling ship, Thanos watched the Bone Folk slam into the back of Felldust’s fleet. It was a moment that was simultaneously impressive and terrifying, the wood and bone ships ripping into their targets, the warriors starting to swarm over the decks of their foes.
It looked incredible, unstoppable, destructive beyond words. Thanos saw warriors cutting down their foes with brutal strength, saw Jeva leap and cut a man’s head from his shoulders, saw a dozen more moments that proved just what deadly warriors the Bone Folk were.
Thanos knew it wouldn’t be enough. It could never be enough.
Their fleet had looked so impressive when it had been traveling, and individually, the warriors of Jeva’s people were far more dangerous than the masses of Felldust’s horde, but against the might of the invasion fleet, they were too few. At best, they could be a distraction. The fact that they were willing to die to be that little made Thanos’s heart clench.
They were willing to do it for Ceres. Thanos could understand that part.
“This is as close as we can get,” the captain of the smuggling ship said as Thanos clambered into a small skiff. “From this point, you’re on your own. I’ll probably make my way further up the coast, but I can’t wait this time. You understand?”
Thanos understood. It would be suicide for the man to wait with his crew by the harbor. More than that, it sounded as though he didn’t expect Thanos to come back at all. Thanos didn’t mind that. The captain had already done more than Thanos could have hoped for.
He sat while they lowered the skiff into the water, then hurried it forward using oars. The surrounding ships would have blocked the wind if he’d tried the small sail, so he pulled his way through the violence and the chaos of it.
It was terrifying, rowing his way through a battle. Screams and voices yelling orders filled the air. Arrows struck the water like flying fish returning to their homes. Thanos watched as a Bone Folk ship with a great ram struck one of the Felldust barges in what seemed like slow motion, timbers broader than Thanos was tall snapping as though they were nothing.
If this hadn’t been for Ceres, Thanos wouldn’t have risked something as mad as this.
A jar of flaming oil struck the water ahead, burning in a film on top of the low waves. Thanos rowed back as hard as he could, trying to avoid it. His small boat could never survive something like that, and in the heart of a battle, he had no doubt that predators waited in the harbor waters if he fell in.
He rowed as hard as he could for shore, not aiming for the main jetties of the harbor, but instead for a patch of shingle nearby where small fishing boats stood untouched, obviously abandoned by their owners when they realized that the oncoming fleet would block their escape.
That made Thanos wonder how long his own escape route would last. How long would the Bone Folk be able to fight? How long would they be able to keep a route through Felldust’s fleet open? How many of them would die doing it?
Thanos didn’t know, but right then, it didn’t matter. He had to find Ceres.
He pulled the boat up onto the shale, drawing his longsword as he stepped down. He had no doubt that it would be a fight if anyone saw him, and there was a long route between him and the castle. He would find Ceres there and he would get her out of the city, whatever it took.
He ran up through the city. He saw men fighting there, sacking houses one by one. Thanos gripped his blade tighter. A part of him wanted to run to those houses, fight the attackers off, and save those within.
“You’re dead if you do it, Thanos,” a familiar voice said. A woman’s voice. “Oh, I know you want to help, but there are too many, and after all, they’re only peasants.”
A woman stepped from between two buildings, holding out a hand. Thanos half raised his weapon, expecting an attack, but it was obvious that she was alone. She was dirty and starved looking, with rings around her eyes that suggested she hadn’t slept, and a blanket wrapped roughly about her shoulders.
Thanos wasn’t sure that he would have recognized Queen Athena if she hadn’t spoken.
“Quick, this way,” she said, gesturing for him to follow her back into the house. “They’ve been past this spot, so they won’t be back for a while. One of the advantages of systematic plunder is that you know where you’re safe.”
“I would have expected you to be perfectly safe in the castle,” Thanos said, but he followed her. The queen was right: he needed to get out of sight.
They ducked back into a house together. The door wasn’t locked. If anything, it looked as though it had been broken open with an axe. Thanos didn’t want to think about what had happened to the inhabitants.
It gave Thanos a moment to decide what he felt about this meeting, but he wasn’t sure that it was enough. The last time he’d seen Athena, she’d been falsely condemning him for the murder of her husband, in order to save her son. She was a viper, yet now she seemed less like an enemy and more like just an older woman caught up in the violence.
“What are you doing out here?” Thanos asked. “I thought Ceres had you imprisoned.”
He watched while Athena sat down on a rough wooden chair that was practically all that remained of the furniture there.
“When Stephania took the castle from her, she decided I wasn’t worth keeping around. It seems both the women in your life hate me, Thanos.”
They probably had every reason to, but Thanos didn’t say that.
“And Ceres?” he asked.
“Was Stephania’s to torment, the last I saw,” Athena answered. She seemed neither pleased nor displeased by that, where once she might have reveled in it. “Alive, though, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Was that what this was? Was the former queen there to hurt him? Perhaps she planned to demand his help. If so, she would be waiting a long time after all she had done.
“You’re wondering what I’m doing here,” she guessed. “What
I want from you.”
Thanos nodded.
“Frankly, I’m waiting for assassins to jump out of the woodwork. You were trying to kill me the last time we saw one another.”
He tried to summon more sympathy for her, and he did have some, the same way he would have sympathy for anyone caught up in this situation. This was a woman who could have been like a mother to him.
The truth was that she never had been, though. She’d been distant at best, hostile at worst. Thanos had always had it made clear to him that he was a spare and useless prince around the court, and a lot of that had been Athena’s doing.
“I was trying to protect my son,” she said. “You went after him, didn’t you? Did you find him in Felldust?”
“I did,” Thanos admitted, and in that one brief moment, he did feel sorry for her. It had to be a hard thing hearing that your son was dead.
She sat there, and didn’t even try to hold back the tears that fell then.
“My son,” she murmured. “My beautiful son.”
Her beautiful son who had been a monster. Who had looked like everyone’s dream of a prince and turned lives into nightmares. Thanos reached out to touch her shoulder then, and Athena pulled back. He watched her piecing her composure back together, and when she looked up at him again, there was no trace of her grief, she’d buried it that deep.
“I should hate you,” she said. “But the truth is that I set this in motion. Lucious was… he was mad. Stephania is just evil. She has treated me like this. She has tricked and abused you. I want you to kill her. I want you to do that, as your penance for killing my son.”
“As my penance?” Thanos echoed. He couldn’t believe that she was thinking like that. “I’m here to save Ceres.”
“And Stephania has her,” Athena said. “Do you know all the ways into the castle? Do you know the tunnels?”
“I know some,” Thanos said. “I made it inside without the guards spotting me.”
He had the sense that they were bargaining now, but he didn’t have enough time to bargain. Outside, he could still hear the sounds of the battle raging, the screams of men and women as they were dragged out into the streets.
“And you think that’s what you need to do now?” Athena countered. “Look around you. Look. The city has fallen. The castle will fall. And when it does… I can guess which of the tunnels Stephania will take, where it will come out. She’ll run, and you can be there when she does.”
“I’m not here for Stephania,” Thanos said, although he couldn’t help thinking about her then. He’d gone there before to try to get her out, and she still mattered. It was just… this was about Ceres. Wasn’t it?
“Do you think they won’t be together?” Athena said. “Do you think she won’t keep Ceres with her? She was planning to use her to bargain. Besides, those two are bound together as long as they both love you. They’ll keep coming back together. It’s inevitable.”
Thanos hoped that wasn’t true. He really hoped that he and Ceres and Stephania wouldn’t be caught up like that for the rest of their lives. He could believe Athena’s reasoning though. Stephania would sit safe until she thought there was nothing to do but run, and then she would abandon everything.
And yes, she might take Ceres with her.
“How about if I sweeten this?” Athena said. “I know where you can find out more about your mother.”
“In Felldust,” Thanos said. “I know.”
“Is that what Claudius told you?” Athena countered. She smiled. “My husband had many fine qualities, but he wasn’t good at keeping track of things. I kept my eyes on your mother, because I don’t like having rivals too close at hand. My people almost took her in Felldust. It was probably why she moved on.”
Thanos stared at her. Only Athena would admit that she was planning to kill someone’s mother, right to their face. But then, he had just admitted what he’d done to Lucious, hadn’t he?
“Where?” Thanos asked.
“Promise that you’ll kill Stephania, give me a way out of here, and I’ll tell you.”
Thanos swallowed. He wanted to know, but there was only so much he could promise.
“I’m going after Ceres,” he said. “If I run into Stephania I’ll… I’ll do whatever I think is right. As for getting you out of here, there are small boats on the shore, and people I brought are creating a distraction even now. I can’t give you more than that.”
Athena sat there, seeming to consider it. She actually sat there as though this were some negotiation she could just walk away from. Finally, she stood.
“Very well,” she said. “There is a spot nearby, among three cedar trees, behind a statue of the masked revelers. That is the escape route I would use if I were Stephania. As for your mother, she fled to the lands of the cloud palaces.”
That was far enough that Thanos winced at the thought of having to travel there. The lands were notoriously difficult to travel through, with their warring clans and their mountainous islands.
“I’ve done my part,” Athena said. She stood. “For what it’s worth, I wish that things could have been different between us.”
“So do I,” Thanos said, but Athena was already gone, slipping off toward the water.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Ceres sprinted after Stephania, following the tunnels even though she could barely see now without her brother’s torch. The need to see Stephania punished for everything she’d done drove her on. She wasn’t going to get away from this without cost, the way she seemed to have gotten away with so much else in her life.
Ceres could feel the weight of the swords in her hands. Stephania had killed so many people. She’d murdered them to keep secrets and to hurt Ceres, to grab power and to try to hang on to it. By any standard, she deserved death.
Ceres saw sunlight ahead and ran toward it. If Stephania got out into the open air, there would be too many directions she could go in. Ceres might be able to move faster than her, but she wouldn’t be able to find her.
She broke out into the open air and found herself in a spot that seemed incongruous in the middle of Delos. Statues surrounded the entrance, representing gods and goddesses so old Ceres couldn’t begin to name them, half of them worn smooth with time. A few trees enclosed a green space, with a fountain at the center. It was the kind of place that might have been planned and then forgotten about, left as a way to disguise the tunnel entrance, or that might have grown up by accident.
Stephania was there, but not in the way Ceres expected. She was currently face down in the fountain, kicking and struggling as another figure held her there. The woman wore strips of cloth wound round her in the fashion of Felldust, and if it had been anyone but Stephania, Ceres would have rushed forward to help. Then there was what she was saying.
“And this is for everything you did to Thanos. He saved me, and you treated him like he was…” She looked up, obviously hearing Ceres approach. She hauled Stephania up, wrenching her arm behind her back in a way that made her wince.
Good. As far as Ceres was concerned, she deserved that, and more than that. Even so, Ceres kept her hands on her swords.
“Who are you?” Ceres asked. “What are you doing here? How do you know Thanos?”
Ceres saw the other woman look her up and down. “Stephania? Who is this?”
Ceres heard Stephania laugh at that, the sound coming out as a series of spluttering coughs.
“Do you hear that, Ceres? You’re unrecognizable now. Thanks to—”
The other woman cut her off by dunking her head back under the water.
“Ceres? You’re Ceres?” Again, Ceres saw the other woman looking her over. She flashed a smile, sudden and bright. “Yes, I can see what he sees in you. If I weren’t dying…”
She pulled Stephania up, gasping.
“Who are you?” Ceres asked again. “What are you doing here?”
“My name is Felene,” she replied. “My story is a long and complex one, and the bards had better learn to si
ng it right when I’m gone. Felene, the pirate who tracked a princess across continents for revenge. There’s a song in that, don’t you think?”
Frankly, Ceres suspected that she might be drunk. Even so, right then, anyone who had Stephania’s arm twisted painfully behind her back probably counted as a friend.
“Forgive me if I ramble,” Felene said. “But someone stabbed me in the back over in Felldust, and the delirium is getting a bit”—she broke into a fit of coughing—“much. Now where was I? This is for making me kill a woman who had the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen.”
She dunked Stephania back under the water of the fountain. To her own surprise, Ceres found herself stepping forward, reaching out an arm to pull Felene back. The look she gave Ceres as Stephania came up gasping had hard edges, but also a hint of confusion to it.
“There was a time I’d have punched you for putting your hands on me like that,” Felene said. She winced. “Which probably says something unfortunate about my life. What? Do you want to take a turn drowning her?”
Ceres shook her head. “This is cruel, Felene. I don’t know you, but I know Thanos, and he wouldn’t travel with someone who would torture someone to death.”
She saw Felene’s expression soften a little. She flung Stephania down at Ceres’s feet so suddenly that Ceres had to take a step back.
“Thanos is the soft-hearted one,” Felene said. “I’m frankly astonished he’s lived this long. Still, you’re right. If you want someone dead, you kill them. No amount of pain is going to undo what she’s done.”
Ceres could understand the desire to hurt Stephania. It was there inside her too. A part of her wanted to beat Stephania. To cut her in retaliation for everything that Stephania had done to her. Ceres wasn’t going to do that, though. Not because she didn’t think Stephania deserved it, but because she didn’t deserve to have to do it.
“You are going to kill her though?” Felene asked. “If you don’t want to do it, I will, but… I figure she’s hurt you more than anyone. More even than me, and she’s killed me.”
